This Chelsea vs Tottenham tactical analysis breaks down a 1-2 Sydney Super Cup friendly that flattered no one.

Chelsea’s 1-2 defeat to Tottenham in the Sydney Super Cup is the clearest tactical signal of pre-season so far — and Tottenham didn’t even need the extra man to deliver it. For an hour, De Zerbi’s side did exactly what a good pre-season performance is supposed to do: show a clear identity, months ahead of schedule. A red card and thirty-odd minutes a man light barely dented it — Spurs saw the game out compact, then nicked the winner in stoppage time.

Chelsea vs Tottenham Tactical Analysis: Match Facts

• Competition: Sydney Super Cup pre-season friendly, Accor Stadium
• Score: Chelsea 1-2 Tottenham
• Scorers: Tonali 17′, Estêvão (equaliser), Richarlison 90+2′ (winner)
• Sent off: Kevin Danso (Tottenham), second half

Spurs’ buildup: overloading by design

Tottenham’s possession wasn’t possession for its own sake — it was structured to create numerical overloads Chelsea never solved.

• Van Hecke and Ben Davies carried the ball out from deep with real composure, disguising their passing angle before releasing into Tonali or a covering midfielder. Van Hecke looked comfortable enough on both feet that Chelsea couldn’t easily show him one way.
• Tonali played the fixed anchor rather than a roaming deep-lying playmaker — holding his position so Bergvall could push into the half-space knowing his cover was set.
• That freed Tottenham to build 3v2 overloads out wide: Robertson, Tel and Gallagher on one side, Bergvall, Gray and Solomon on the other. It dragged Chelsea’s block sideways and opened central gaps the moment Bergvall advanced — gaps Van Hecke was happy to spear passes into, usually finding Solanke dropping off the front line.
• Kinský effectively played as an auxiliary centre-back throughout, giving Spurs an extra body in build-up that Chelsea’s front line couldn’t press away.

Chelsea’s press never solved the picture. Whenever the front two went head-on at Tottenham’s centre-backs without covering the pivot behind them, Spurs simply played through midfield — Kinský’s involvement made it closer to 11-v-11 in build-up than a conventional back four.

The standout: Mathys Tel

Tel was the individual difference-maker. Touchline-hugging rather than coming inside to receive, he isolated Chelsea’s new signing Marco Palestra one-on-one repeatedly and won that battle most of the time — driving into the box diagonally or cutting back for a trailing runner. It reinforced a point worth repeating: Tel is a winger, not a striker. He’s not dominant enough in the air and drops too far out of build-up phases to lead the line — but as a direct, close-control wide threat, this was the best he’s looked. Gallagher, drifting into pockets without ever occupying one, complemented him well as a link rather than a No. 10 in the Fernandes/Ødegaard passing sense — more a runner than a passer.

Chelsea’s problem: nobody organizing the box

Tottenham’s opener and Chelsea’s best spell both pointed at the same issue — no one in Chelsea’s back line was marshalling it. When Spurs overloaded a flank or got bodies around the box, nobody was visibly directing runners, tightening the space, or stopping the shape from going flat. That’s a leadership gap, not just a structural one, and it’s the kind of thing that costs Chelsea points once the season starts if it isn’t fixed this window. Estêvão’s equaliser, from a Gittens in-swinging cross, was the one moment Chelsea’s front players combined with real purpose — a blueprint they didn’t repeat enough.

The red card that changed the picture

• Danso’s error — on for Van Hecke, gave the ball away under minimal pressure, then denied João Pedro a clear run on goal with a professional foul. Straight red, Spurs down to ten with over half an hour left.
• De Zerbi’s response was the tactical story of the half. No retreat to a back five. He kept his front three and both midfielders, added a defender for Gallagher, and set up a compact 4-4-1 mid-block — still occupying the zones that had suffocated Chelsea all game rather than inviting pressure onto a deep line.
• It worked. Chelsea still couldn’t consistently overload the wide areas or find cutbacks, and Kinský carried the shot-stopping load — a crossbar-denying stop from Estêvão at close range, then another sharp save to deny João Pedro from six yards.
• Chelsea’s second-half fix never arrived. Individual pressing rather than unit pressing, and a rigid back five that never stretched or adapted — the same issues flagged at half-time, still unresolved with ten men in front of them.
• Ten men and still finding the higher gear: Rio Kyerematen rattled the bar from open play, and in stoppage time Jamie Donley’s effort came back off the post for Richarlison — on since half-time for Solanke — to finish from close range. A winner built on exactly the compactness and directness Spurs had shown all game, not a smash-and-grab.

Verdict

A ten-man Spurs side out-organised, out-pressed and eventually out-scored a Chelsea team that never fixed what was wrong with it at half-time. Danso’s sending-off should have been the platform for a Chelsea response; instead the same build-up patterns and pressing indiscipline held right through to Richarlison’s winner, and a defence still without an organiser conceded from a rebound it should have been alive to. Plenty for Xabi Alonso to work with across four or five more pre-season fixtures — De Zerbi, by contrast, leaves Sydney with a template that survived a man down.